Matthew.Taylor

Made these last Friday. They’re good, no doubt of that, but they taste too plain. These things need something, maybe some spice (cinnamon at least) beyond salt, perhaps darker chocolate. Here’s the recipe. Deep Dish Oatmeal Fudge Bars what you need: 1 cup butter 2 eggs 2 cups brown sugar 1/3 cup milk 2 teaspoons vanilla 2 1/2 cups flour 1 tsp. baking soda 1 tsp. salt 3 cups oatmeal In a saucepan over medium heat, melt together 1 can eagle’s brand sweetened condensed milk 1/3 cup butter 1 tsp. vanilla 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips Directions: how to make it: Mix the butter, eggs and brown sugar. Add vanilla and milk. Slowly incorporate the rest of the dry ingredients. Mix well. I prefer using a stand mixer since it’s quite thick. Spread 3/4 of the cookie mixture on the bottom of a greased 13×9 pan, pour chocolate mixture, then spread rest of cookie mixture on tops in spoonfuls (won’t cover completely-but will leave cool designs). The top can tend to get done before it’s completely cooked, so you can put aluminum foil over it for the last five or so if it looks like it’s browning too much. Bake for 25 minutes at 350 degrees. Let cool, otherwise it won’t set up and will just run when you cut into it. Any advice that can be given would be appreciated.

Here’s what I made Friday. Deep dish oatmeal fudge bars. Tomorrow I’m making some baguettes!

Is there something called CD film on Amazon? I didn’t see it.

Ok i’m not gonna be able to sleep until I know what that is and how to do it.

Hopefully buttercream. Collin is only turning three, and I myself don’t really like fondant. I imagine the cream will have to be very smooth, but still be firm. I’ve been looking for such a frosting for a long time.

Yeah, it’s a tool for cake decorating. This is it here. https://watsonandwebb.com/collections/cake-kits/products/airbrush-cake-decorating-kit-watson-webb-master I hope this will improve decorating in time for my 3 year old nephew’s Car cake in late October.

Ok my birthday is today, and we celebrated it over the weekend. My big gift was a Winston & Webb airbrush kit. Made specifically for cake decoration and associated stuff. So I just wanted to ask for any advice I need to know before trying it out.

This is hummingbird cake. A southern classic.

Been awhile, but this weekend I decided to make a Gugelhupf. There are a lot of stories about this cake’s origin, but this is my favorite. It’s said that on the way home from honoring the baby Jesus, the three Magi passed through what is now France, where they met a potter who opened his home to them. In order to pay him for his generosity, they took a pot he had just made (which looked like there turbans), and using ingredients they had, baked a cake for him. When the potter awoke the next morning, he found his guests gone, but the cake there.

Ok i’m Gonna try a side by side comparison this weekend. Either sugar or butter cookies. I’ll post whatever I find.

Bakers Ammonia was a staple ingredient in Springerle cookies once, and helped give them there crispness. I’m trying to think of a recipe I could use it with to test it, and right now my mind keeps running back to shortbread.

Ok been reading up about this stuff, and I have a small bottle, but I have yet to use it. I was thinking of replacing the baking powder in my chocolate chip cookies with this, but I also recall reading once that it was unwise to use this outside of recipes that actually call for it. What do you think?

Ok, finished this weekend’s big project. And it was a doozy. I made some old style apple strudel. I’m definitely saving this recipe. The filling is two Granny Smith, one honey crisp, and one golden delicious apple. A cup of golden raisins, brown and normal sugar, cinnamon and ginger, and melted butter. I’m not sure if I was supposed to cut the log in two, but it was too long to fit on the sheet by itself.

Ok this is this weekend's baking project. They're Bermuda Banana Snickedoodles. The recipe is from the latest issue of "Bake from Scratch" magazine (I hope you guys have heard of it, if you haven't, then you need to look for it!) They're distinguished by the 3/4 of a cup of Banana puree mixed in, which adds this really nice soft banana taste to them.

Thanks for the honesty. Truthfully, I got some surprisingly good taste from the ganache. Diced Strawberries and cream overnight, and then sieved out seemed to work pretty well, but you're idea is interesting too, but wouldn't that put too much liquid in the ganache?

OK guys, I'd like some opinions, and I ask you to be merciless here. This is the first time I've made filled chocolates, and i'm overall happy with them. I didn't use any of the polycarbonate molds I had, but cheaper plastic ones, as I couldn't find any egg shaped molds that would make it here in time for Easter. They're milk chocolate (as these are for a 2 and 5 year old's Easter baskets), and the filling is a strawberry White Chocolate Ganache made by sitting the cream and diced Strawberries in a bowl together overnight, before sifting them out and mixing them with the white chocolate, and colored with a little bit of pink candy coloring.

Ok, I decided to do some experimentation today. I took my recipe for Almond shortbread, and replaced the almond meal with toasted Pecans ground to a powder. The bottom is not burnt, I brushed the bottoms with beaten egg, and dipped them in raw turbinado sugar, and baked them like that. I tried to use a cookie stamp on them, but I ended up destroying three trying to get them off.

Dang! Nice! Grats Man.

I really like the Bagel bombs, but i'm gonna be honest with you. I don't think the sweet potato crust pizza looks very good, or appetizing. I hope you enjoyed it, but if I saw it in a restaurant, I probably wouldn't order it. I hope you aren't upset at that, but I felt the urge to be honest here.

No I'd never dream of that. I'm still working on all the start-up stuff for my business right now. Yeah it turned out fine really, though I feel the layers didn't rise as much as they could, and I still don't fell that it tasted as good as it should. I'm going to be very careful about that in the future. White cake is part of what I call the Trifecta of cake (white, yellow, chocolate), and it's reportedly the traditional sponge for wedding cakes, so I need to get one down.

Here’s something else I made today, as part of my bakeries first official order.

OK, here's this weekends work. The cake is White Cake, and the shards are 60% cacao chocolate and colored white chocolate. It's not as tall as I'd like, but it is just practice.The shards were originally a chocolate fan I made with my first attempt at tempering chocolate, using the "melt the chocolate 75% Then take off the heat and add more" method. I think it worked pretty well all in all, though with my final decision for decorating, I felt they wouldn't really work they way I made them.

It's not a good weekend for baking. I decided to try out a White cake recipe for the first time tonight. it's in the oven as we speak. I tried tasting the dough before portioning it out, and it tasted really unsweet, which is because I forgot to add the sugar. Sigh. I quickly added the sugar in, and it tasted much better, hopefully it will turn out okay. I need a good wedding cake sponge.

OK, once again I have tried to make Macarons, and surprisingly, these were even worse than the first time, cracked all over and not tasting good at all. As such, in honor of this event, I am starting a venting thread for those bakes that just didn't work out. You were sure you were doing everything right, that you were following all the right instructions, but it just wouldn't come out right. So feel free to open up about this as you wish. Tell us about your disasters, offer advice and comfort where it is needed, whatever, Next weeks project: Mastering Macarons.

The only person I really disliked was Ruby from season 2 (I think it was 2, I watch on Netflix and it calls it season 2, but I heard it was actually like 5 or something). She was just so whiny! Every time she was on it was always the same: “oh it’s just so terrible, it looks awful!” “It’s wonderful Ruby.” NEXT WEEK: “oh it’s just so awful!” I started to hope she’d get eliminated just so she’d stop whining.